UNESCO, the UN's cultural organization, announced on Tuesday that it is prepared to offer support after two World Heritage sites in Syria and Türkiye, which are listed on its registry, were severely damaged after a 7.7-magnitude earthquake struck the countries, the epicenter of which is the Pazarcık district of Kahramanmaraş.
As well as the damage to the old city of Syria's Aleppo and the fortress in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakır, UNESCO said at least three other World Heritage sites could be affected.
"Our organization will assist within its mandate," said UNESCO director-general Audrey Azoulay.
In Türkiye, UNESCO said it was saddened by the "collapse of several buildings" at the World Heritage site of the Diyarbakir Fortress and the adjacent Hevsel Gardens.
The statement by UNESCO emphasized that the entire area was an essential center of the Roman, Sassanid, Byzantine, Islamic, and Ottoman periods.
The pre-dawn quake hit near Gaziantep in southeastern Turkey at a depth of about 18 kilometers (11 miles), the U.S. Geological Survey said.
With weather and the remote nature of the areas making access and information hard to come by, UNESCO said other sites on the World Heritage list not far from the epicenter could be affected.
It said these included the famed Neolithic site of Göbekli Tepe in Şanlıurfa province, home to the world's oldest known megaliths, some 10,000 years old.
UNESCO is also concerned about the Nemrut Dağ site, one of Türkiye's most iconic attractions because of the giant statues that are part of an ancient royal tomb erected high on a mountain.
The third site is the neo-Hittite archaeological site of Arslantepe outside Malatya, a city also severely hit by the earthquake.
"UNESCO is mobilizing its experts to establish a precise inventory of the damage to secure and stabilize these sites rapidly," it said.
The statement by UNESCO also said it was "particularly concerned" about the old city of Aleppo, which has been on its list of World Heritage in Danger since 2013 due to the Syrian civil war.
"Significant damage has been noted in the citadel. The western tower of the old city wall has collapsed, and several buildings in the souks have been weakened," it said.
Aleppo was Syria's prewar commercial hub and is considered one of the world's longest-continuously inhabited cities, boasting markets, mosques, caravanserais, and public baths. But a brutal siege imposed on rebels by government forces left it disfigured.
Syria's directorate of antiquities had already raised concern about the damage on Wednesday, saying parts of Aleppo's northern defensive walls had collapsed.
